


Weltschmerz

by Ariss_Tenoh



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 05:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2298275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariss_Tenoh/pseuds/Ariss_Tenoh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violence breeds violence. Sometimes, so does love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weltschmerz

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on March 18th 2006. A possible ending to Crown of Shadows.

Beneath the night sky, tents were pitched in the tight circular formation of a camp. Horses moved restlessly in their places, the emotions of the humans affecting the fae and unsettling the animals. Small fires around which men, and some women, sat and spoke softly. A tension hung above the camp, the silence before the storm.

 

Inside one of the tents, recently-reinstated Reverend Damien Kilcannon Vryce of the Church of the Unification and Knight of the Order of the Golden Flame sat alone pondering the circumstances that brought him to this place, at this time in human-Ernan history.

 

**When the devil comes blowing through your door.. You'll know there's trouble, and he's coming back for more.** A female voice, deep and weary sang. **You better keep what is precious hidden under the floor or you better treat it so good it will never want for more.** The voice carried clearly across the quiet, cold night air. A stringed instrument accompanied the voice's lonely tones.

 

Aridna's voice, Damien thought with a distracted air. Lord, what was he doing here? Leading an army into Jaggonath. How had it come to this? Despair flooded his heart at the thought.

 

He was looking for a way out of this confrontation. A way out of the civil war brewing in the eastern lands, but since that fateful night in a black keep in a blacker forest.. Damien had known. He'd known it would come to this. Why else had he ridden straight to the west after seeing a head tossed into a bonfire?

 

The servants of the One God, those that survived the Forbidden Forest, drunk on their success had not stopped at that dearly bought victory. They'd gone to destroy every temple and pagan church in Jaggonath, claiming that the city was now holy and all 'filthy traces' of non-believers had to be purged. _Purged, what an ugly word._ Damien sat hunched over his wooden stool and closed his eyes. Reports of the Purge had reached the Matriarch in the West, a purge which went beyond buildings and inanimate objects. She'd been horrified and had sent several letters to the Patriarch demanding an explanation. No reply was received. The final straw had been when news of the mob, a self-styled army of True Faith, was marching across the cities and daes to spread their message of violence and blood. The Matriarch had ordered the Knights of the Flame to intercede.

 

_In over nine hundred years, the Order hasn't gone into war ever since you led them under King Gannon's banner. What would you do, Gerald? If you'd seen your order slaying their own brothers in the name of the same faith? Maybe it's better that you didn't live to see this._ Yet, Damien knew that if the man was here he'd have found a way. If there was a man who could end this lunacy, it would have been Gerald Tarrant.

 

_But not even an adept can block an arrow to the heart_ , came the bitter thought.

 

He stood up and took a few steps to where a battered table stood at one end of his tent. Local maps were strewn across it, having been furiously consulted earlier in the day. He picked up the water bottle and drank. The lukewarm water not doing much to his parched throat, much less his withered soul.

 

Aridna's voice drifted through the closed flaps of his tent. **But looking back in retrospect, did you ever really get what you'd expect? Trying to rectify.. Got lost a little further. You've been trying to justify, find out how and where it came.**

 

He normally enjoyed her songs and their wry world-weary lyrics. Tonight though, they hit a little too close to home. No, he hadn't got what he'd expected. To help a man from Hell only to fail him later. Damien had gone to the Matriarch to seek her forgiveness, he'd believed he owed it to her to explain the events of the past two years. He doubted the Patriarch had reported them faithfully to her without condemning Damien to everything short of eternal damnation. The Matriarch had surprised him. She'd sat and listened to him, interrupting only to ask question or further explanations. When he'd finished, close to tears despite his efforts to control his emotions, she'd put one hand on his shoulder and told him she was proud of him. Damien had been totally flummoxed at that point. And then she'd told him that he was NOT excommunicated from the Church.

 

_'Why?' He asked, almost pleaded to know._

_'Because a priest is not merely one who wears the collar and recites the scriptures, Mer Vryce.' She smiled gently._

 

Damien walked in the darkness of his tent and laid down on his thin pallet. It seemed he wasn't to be forgiven, because she wasn't the one to judge him she told him in solemn words, nor was he to be released from his service to the Church. When news came of the unrest in the East, she'd summoned him to her audience chamber and requested his help. It was a request, the Matriarch said, and he was free to refuse. But would he consider saving the world for a third time, please?

 

Damien's mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. Dealing with the dour rigid head of the Eastern Autarchy had made him forget the wicked humor and sharp tongue of the Western one.

 

**Devil was your angel, but it's not no more... The devil was your angel, when you weren't sure.**

 

Beside his pallet lay a wooden box; it seemed to gleam even in the inky darkness. He reached with one hand and placed his palm atop the box. The box, or rather what was within it, shuddered in reaction.

 

"Do you like the gift so much, priest?"

 

In a heartbeat, Damien grasped his sword in one hand and jumped to his feet. He could feel his bones protesting the movement.

 

A man stepped out from one corner of the tent, he didn't stop until he was within arm reach of Damien. His human appearance and clothes couldn't disguise the fact that his eyes were black pools.

 

"Humans have irises, Riven." The comment was so dry it could have cracked in half.

 

The man laughed softly and shrugged. "Give me time, Damien. I'm still young for an Iezu."

 

Between the two of them, the use of first names was more a taunt and an insult than a gesture of intimacy or familiarity.

 

Damien didn't sheathe his sword. "I'm expected to believe that a child of the Hunter is young and harmless? What kind of a fool do you take me for?"

 

"You tell me, Vryce. You're the priest who befriended the Hunter."

 

A body flinched. Riven Forrest had no difficulty seeing in the dark.

 

"Karril told you about me then. And he brought you _that_." The Iezu inclined his head toward the box.

 

Damien was silent.

 

"Is it wise for you to use it? Having so recently been forgiven by your Church."

 

The smooth polite tone didn't hide the message between the words. Oh yes, one would not mistake this Iezu's parentage, Damien thought wryly.

 

"If you need to ask me that, you already know the answer." He wasn't going to back down to a being who'd been born six months ago, even if it was a demon.

 

"'The end justifies the means.' Is that your answer, Reverend?" Riven's sharp tongue matched his predatory facial features.

 

The anger was hot and instant, it felt good to feel it again. Anything but the bleak despondency he'd fallen into since that night.

 

"Unlike you Iezu, we humans are more than the sum of our parts." Conviction rang clear in his voice. It was good to be sure of something again. Damien gripped his sword so hard, he could feel every line in its hilt.

 

Riven walked leisurely around him in a circle, Damien turned to keep him in his view.

 

"I'm curious. You would do this for him, but you didn't kill his murderer. Why?"

 

He was about to utter an angry retort before he realised that it was an honest question. He could sense the innocent need to know in it. Damien lowered his sword.

 

"It was justice. In a way. And he didn't want me to interfere," Damien answered.

 

The sudden burst of laughter shocked Damien. He also wondered why no one had heard them yet. _Iezu illusion_ , he realized.

 

"You wouldn't kill Andrys Tarrant because he's the last of that man's line but you would kill others in this war in his name."

 

"I'd kill in this war, if I have to, because it's the only course left," Damien snapped, "Don't insult me by implying I was his puppet. I knew exactly what I chose on every step of that journey with him."

 

Riven's green tunic, so dark it was almost black, and black knee-high boots made him pass as a man. But it was the open compassion in his expression that could have made him truly human.

 

"The Hunter grew more human with you by his side. I'd think carefully on what you've become, Vryce." He nodded toward the box.

 

Damien felt the anger and tension leave him dry and empty as he'd been these past months. He stepped around the demon and sat down heavily on the stool, it rocked slightly.

 

"I need to end this war quickly. Before there's nothing left of the Church to save." The admission was painful.

 

Silence stretched between the two of them for a long time, muted only by the singing that could be heard from outside.

 

"I will give you any assistance you require."

 

"Why?" Damien looked up at him.

 

Riven Forrest hesitated for a moment. "I did not inherit only his love for hunting." The Iezu disappeared, not slowly like Karril would, but instantly.

 

Damien chuckled, it was a sad sound. It seemed Riven had also inherited his father's tendency to insist on having the last word in an argument. Damien looked at the thin line of light coming from between the tent's flaps, he let his mind wander and listened to the closing lines of Aridna's song.

 

**Devil was my angel, now I'm just not sure. To travel as my angel there's always my whore. Maybe you're an angel, tried to remember you're an angel....... Remember you're an angel, if you're not sure.** The stringed instrument gave a few more twangs before going silent. The camp settled down for the night.

 

* * *

 

"Damien, are you awake?" A hand pushed open the tent's flap.

 

"I couldn't sleep anyway with a crow cackling all night."

 

A woman stepped into the tent. She was tall and dressed in the white robes and golden flame collar of Damien's order. "Damien Kilcannon Vryce! You know you love my singing!"

 

Drying his face with a small towel, Damien gave her a warm smile. Aridna was tall, taller than he was or most men were in fact, a comely brunette, and very proficient with a sword. She was the captain of the female knights in the Order, a company of some thirty women, and the last man who called her a 'weak woman' had lost all of his front teeth. She had also at one time asked him to marry her. Damien wondered at the strange ways in which life moved. Losing some people and meeting some again.

 

"Are you all right?" She was too perceptive too, he'd forgotten that about her.

 

"I'm fine. Everyone's ready?"

 

Aridna nodded. She lingered a moment and looked at him, then left.

 

_Sometimes, women are just too perceptive when it comes to emotions._ With that thought, he kneeled in front of the box and opened it. A leather sheath, slightly scorched, heavily embroidered with runes and sigils. Damien took a deep breath and pulled the sword from it.

 

Coldfire blazed from the Worked metal like the furious light of a dark sun.

 

He remembered the conversation that took place three months ago.

 

_"Karril, is that..."_

_"It's his sword. I meant to give it to him later. I thought it would be a good joke..."_

_"But he threw it into the crater."_

_"It was a symbolic gesture mostly. The fae currents imprint on human intent, you know. Besides, the crater's quite big."_

_........._

_"Why give it to me?"_

_"You're going to need it."_

_"I won't use-"_

_"Vryce, you're going to need it! And soon."_

_"What are you not telling me?"_

_"You'll understand soon enough."_

 

Damien _had_ understood, too late. He needed to end this madness quickly, before the damage done to the human spirit and to the Church was irreparable. Before 'faith' became a synonym for 'violence.' And if that meant using this malevolent sword.....

 

_I'd think carefully on what you've become, Vryce._

 

He closed his eyes and sheathed the sword. It was his choice, it was always his choice; that was Temptation's path into a man's heart.

 

_I think I'm glad you didn't see this, Gerald. You'd be glaring at me, calling me a reckless fool with more courage than brains. I think I agree with you too. But we didn't save the world and defeat Calesta to let some idiot in Jaggonath make it all meaningless._

 

Damien fastened the leather belt around his waist. The sword hung in its sheath by his side, radiating cold power, malice, and death. But that was all right with the man who would probably die after wielding it.

 

_Save a place for me wherever you are. I'll find you and maybe I'll say those three words I should have said so long ago. After I punch the living daylights out of you for allowing that boy to kill you out of some twisted sense of honour._

 

Sunlight shone into his face when he emerged from the tent, too warm and too bright.

 

Damien's brothers and sisters of the Prophet's Order were waiting. All one hundred and fifty men and women mounted and ready. Aridna handed him his mount's reins. He took it from her and swung into the saddle. He wasn't the same man he was two years ago, it was possible his choice today was a wrong one. But he had to try. Not only for the men and women who'd died since the Purge began, for their loved ones who were left behind, for his Church and faith, or for one brilliant man who shouldn't have died yet.

 

But because it was the right thing to do.

 

And these men and women with him today knew that. Damien's gaze lingered on every one of his fellow priests. He intoned,

 

"In the Lord's name."

 

The sentiment was repeated by the others, a prayer against the darkness of today's battle.

 

They were riding into Jaggonath.

 

High in the sky, a dark shape flew. An omen of things to come.

 

~ End ~

**Author's Note:**

> Weltschmerz: (noun) World weariness; pessimism, apathy, or sadness felt at the difference between physical reality and the ideal state. From German Weltschmerz, from Welt (world) + Schmerz (pain). The song which inspired this fic is "Devil's Song" by Beth Orton.


End file.
